[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 17226-17227]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     GAO REPORT ON AIRPORT SECURITY

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, on January 8 of this year, I requested 
the Government Accountability Office to conduct followup tests of our 
Nation's airport security screening procedures. Investigators attempted 
to smuggle bomb-making materials past security checkpoints in a number 
of airports around the country. This is something the GAO has done for 
Congress on several occasions since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
  It is an important reality check for Congress to find out exactly how 
effective or ineffective the Transportation Security Administration's 
screening procedures are. TSA has spent a lot of time and money trying 
to prevent future terrorist attacks, and we are, no doubt, safer in 
many ways than we were before 9/11. However, it is important to cut 
through the talking points and the press releases. We need to test the 
system in real time with real people carrying potentially destructive 
materials once in a while to find out how vulnerable we still are.
  Unfortunately, the Obama administration, which is now responsible for 
keeping airline passengers safe, does not want you to know the results 
of these tests. In fact, the administration classified almost every 
word of the GAO report as ``secret.'' These sorts of classification 
decisions ought to be made only when the information is actually 
sensitive for national security reasons. The power to classify 
information should not be used merely to hide information that might be 
embarrassing to the administration.
  I understand that certain details of how GAO investigators did what 
they did should not be made public. No one wants to give the terrorists 
a roadmap of how to attack us again. I do not want to do that, and the 
GAO investigators do not want that to happen.
  That is why I asked them to draft a report that did not include those 
sorts

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of details so that a declassified version could be released to the 
public. The problem, however, is that the Obama administration 
classified the report anyway.
  The key data that should be public are the results. Did the GAO 
investigators succeed in penetrating our airport security checkpoints? 
If so, how many times? How many times did they fail? The public has a 
right to know those bottom-line results.
  Those results are not going to help terrorists figure out how to 
better attack us, and they certainly are not going to give them any 
more motivation to try than they already have.
  Keeping the results secret will accomplish one thing, however. It 
will ensure that the public has no idea how effective our airport 
screening strategy actually is, and it seems that is the way the Obama 
administration likes it.
  Therefore, I am asking the TSA Administrator to personally come to 
our secure facilities here in the Senate and explain his decision. 
Several of my colleagues joined me in asking the GAO to do this work, 
including the chairs and the ranking members of the Homeland Security 
Committee in both the House and the Senate. I invite them to join us 
and help resolve this situation.
  We need to work together to make sure that the entire Congress and 
the public are aware of the results of this important work while 
maintaining the security of information that truly needs to remain 
secure.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.

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